Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 21 Jun 1967

Vol. 229 No. 7

Adjournment Debate. - County Donegal Labourers' Cottages.

Mr. Harte

On Thursday of last week I addressed a question to the Minister for Local Government asking him if he was aware of the increased rents now being charged to tenants of council cottages in County Donegal. In the course of a long and stormy debate, the Minister is on record as having said he did not receive this information from Donegal County Council until the day before. I am not in a position to know exactly when the Minister received this information, but I, as a member of Donegal County Council, do not understand why a differential rent scheme introduced on 14th April last was not passed on to the Minister's Department until 13th June. I am suspicious in view of the fact that this might be described as the eve of a miniature general election.

I raise this matter tonight because I feel that this differential rents scheme is a penal system. Differential rents have been applied to the tenants of council cottages in Donegal for the past 20 years but this scheme is, in effect, an excuse to increase the rents of every council cottage in the county. Might I sound a note of warning? When this was being introduced by the manager, the impression was given, not alone to me but I would venture to say to members of the Fianna Fáil Party on the local authority, that it was only in respect of new houses. The argument was put forward that the cost of building these cottages had in creased and the services to them improved and, therefore, it was only reasonable that increased rents should be charged.

This is not a fact. The position is that every council tenant from now on will come under the scheme. In effect, it means that if the tenant of a council cottage dies and his widow, his son or his daughter applies for the tenancy of that cottage, irrespective of the fact that they may have been living in that cottage for 20 or 25 years, the new tenant will now come under this scheme. In effect, this means that an increased rent will be charged to a household on a reduced income. This is the penal system about which I strongly protest to the Minister. I protest to him for this reason. He is on record as saying in last week's Dáil Debates, at column 638:

This new scheme was not planned in my Department. It was produced by Donegal County Council and was sent to my Department yesterday for approval. I have not seen it yet.

The Minister is well aware that his predecessor issued a circular to all local authorities warning them that if unless they brought in new differential rents—not differential rents based on fair means with less money to be collected but differential rents that would bring increased revenue to his Department—they would not get the finance to go ahead with their housing policy. If the Minister tries to tell me and the House that this scheme was devised by Donegal County Council and only submitted to his Department and that he had no foreknowledge of it, he may be kidding members of his own Party but he is not kidding me, not kidding the general public and, least of all, not kidding the people who will have to pay this money in the long run.

This is a penal system. It is outrageous. It is scandalous that in this society we boast about, people in this income group should be asked to pay rents as high as those this differential scheme will demand. In regard to this circular, let me say that this was the iron fist by the Minister and his Department. I was a member of the last Dáil when the then Minister for Local Government, Deputy Blaney, stated that rents would have to increase. If the Minister now tells me he had no prior knowledge of the differential rent scheme being sent to his Department, he is telling an untruth. He should admit that before this debate concludes tonight. It is easy for the Minister to say he does not know what is happening at the level of Donegal County Council. It is easy for him to say that the scheme adopted by them at their meeting in April was not submitted to his Department and he knows nothing about it. Men before him denied similar action.

Under the 1965 Housing Act the Minister took authority to withhold finance from every local authority unless they toed the line and increased rents. When the Minister says there is a low rent and a high rent, there will be more people paying the high than the low. I propose to illustrate that. Let me cite the case of a family living in east Donegal. I can give the Minister the name of this tenant and the name of the housing scheme in which he lives. I do not want to embarrass any particular individual, however, by exposing his income to the general public. It is for that reason only I refrain from naming council tenants. However, this is an actual case. The husband earns £6 per week, one daughter earns £4 per week, another daughter £2 per week, another daughter £2 10s and there is a son unemployed. That gives a total income of £14 10s per week. There are three children in the family and there is a rent allowance of 30/-, 10/- for each child. There is an allowance of £1 for the principal wage-earner and £2 for other wage-earners. This gives the family a rent allowance of £4 10s which, taken from £14 10s, leaves a rent calculation of £10. That amount is divided by five, leaving £2 per week plus rates of approximately 10/-. This means that a family of nine, comprising a mother, father and seven children, earning £14 10s per week, will pay £2 10s per week rent and rent in lieu of rates. This leaves them the princely amount of £12 per week to live on. Then the Minister tells us that this is a differential scheme whereby people who cannot afford to pay will be paying less and people who can afford to pay will be paying for them. This is the greatest folly I have heard since I came into this House.

Mr. Boland

Of course, the Deputy has not heard that.

Mr. Harte

I beg the Minister's pardon, I have heard it and I am repeating it. This is not hypothetical. It is an actual case. I have another case of a man who is unemployed. He has a family of eight children, all school-going. He receives £6 per week unemployment benefit and he pays the minimum rent of 17/6 per week, but additions bring it up to £1 a week. He has £5 per week to provide for his wife and eight children. Yet the Minister tells us that this is a scheme whereby the poorer section will be helped.

I have a further case where the principal wage-earner is part-time employed and earning £6 a week, there are three daughters earning £3 10s, £3 and £2 respectively, a son casually employed earning approximately £4 a week and another son earning £2 10s a week. On the same basis as is applied in the other cases this family will be paying rent of £3 10s per week on an income of £18. That leaves them £14 10s to live on.

The Minister must realise by now that the reason for this is not that a differential rent scheme allows people in the lower income groups to pay less and, as he says, people who can afford it, are asked to pay more. The reason for this is that housing in 1967 is costing approximately double what it cost in 1957 when the Fianna Fáil Government took office and stopped building houses. The cost of housing has increased and it is now necessary to find a new scheme whereby to increase cottage rents.

If the Minister or his predecessor had made some allowance in the 1965 Housing Act for hardship cases, I could appreciate the position, but there is no such allowance. This is the scheme by which until further notice, Donegal County Council, under the instructions of the Minister for Local Government, propose to charge rents for council cottages. I have been inundated with letters from people who have been recently appointed to council schemes in Stranorlar, Killygordon, Raphoe, Ramelton. I warned the people of Lifford that they have a similar fate in store for them, that is, those of them who have been fortunate enough to get houses. The pathetic situation in Donegal at the moment is that people come to your door and appeal to you to speak to the county manager to give them a tenancy of a council cottage. They are not interested in the rent because they are not aware that this increase has taken place. They are prepared to pay a rent similar to that paid by their brothers and sisters who were housed by the inter-Party Government in 1957, that is, a rent of £1 to 30/- a week, out of what could be regarded in rural Ireland as a reasonable income. Having received a letter of thanks from people for whom I have made representations, I received a further letter a week later—this happens to practically every Deputy—asking me to appeal to the county manager to consider a reduction in the rent, that they cannot afford to pay it. Some of them are taken so much by surprise that before they sign the tenancy agreement they telephone to ask my advice as to what they should do. If they sign the tenancy agreement they have got to pay this penal rent forever.

No Deputy could protest strongly enough against the manner in which housing rents are handled at the present time. It is a scandalous situation. The Government have deliberately brought this responsibility upon themselves by the lack of good housing programmes. Had they maintained the progress made by the inter-Party Governments and, indeed, by the Fianna Fáil Government that were in office in the interim between the two inter-Party Governments, the housing problem in Donegal would have been solved or, rather, progress would have been made, and people would not have been asked to pay these increased rents which are due to the increased cost of labour and materials. Not alone are they being asked to pay these rents but they are being asked to pay them out of reduced incomes. The cost of living has increased so much that there is no relationship between the rents applicable in the case of tenants who were appointed prior to this tenancy proposal and those now being appointed.

The Government have increased the interest rates to local authorities in respect of housing and the Minister, even at this stage, will not admit to the House that the responsibility for this must rest fairly and squarely with him, in the Custom House or in O'Connell Street—whichever section of his Department is directly concerned.

The most damning argument of all is that if people in this category who are asked to pay rents of £2 10s to £3 10s per week, who are not in a position to get houses, were to apply to the local authority for an SDA loan to build their own houses they would be refused by the county manager on the ground of their inability to repay. Indeed, if I were occupying the county manager's desk I would probably ask the same questions and would have the same concern as to the ability of the applicant to repay a loan when he would produce the particulars of the total income of his household. It is the most damning argument that tenants in council cottages who are being asked to pay these rents would be refused an SDA loan to provide their own homes because of their inability to repay.

Minister for Local Government (Mr. Boland)

We should be clear as to how this adjournment debate arose. Last Thursday, Deputy Harte asked me if I was aware of the rents being charged to new tenants of labourers' cottages in County Donegal. I told him in my reply that I had received the rents scheme from the county council on the previous day and although nobody should have known better than Deputy Harte that that was the position he chose to accuse me, and through me the officers of my Department who had supplied me with the information, of a deliberate falsehood and he alleged that the whole scheme had been planned by my Department. I want to state as clearly and as emphatically as I can that the scheme was not planned in my Department, that there was no consultation whatsoever, oral or otherwise, with my Department about this scheme, apart from an incidental mention of the fact that a scheme had been adopted by the council on the phone a week previously. This scheme appeared in my Department for the first time on 14th June, 1967. The letter from the Council is date-stamped as received and is here before me now. Let me read the first sentence for the Deputy's information, because he took good care not to be here last Thursday when I read it:

I give herewith, for Ministerial approval, details of the new Differential Rents Scheme adopted by this Council at their meeting of 24th April last.

Let me say also before the Deputy jumps to any more conclusions that I have had the Council contacted as to the meeting of 24th April at which this scheme was adopted. According to the Council records, the Deputy was present at the meeting, and unlike his precipitate departure from this House at Question Time last Thursday, there is no record of any walk out from the meeting or of any dissenting vote on the scheme.

Mr. Harte

I have also consulted the report.

Mr. Boland

Why should Deputy Harte come along here now to attack me for action taken by the Council of which he is a member, at a meeting at which he was present, and with which he did not trouble to express dissent at the time when his dissent would have some meaning.

Mr. Harte

There is no record of what happened at that meeting.

Mr. Boland

Instead he waited until now to launch his bogus attack. Last Thursday Deputy Harte, having made his allegations which he knew to be false, ran out of the House in order to forward to the local paper his own edited version of the proceedings.

Mr. Harte

On a point of order.

An Ceann Comhairle

That is not a point of order.

Mr. Harte

May I be allowed to ask the Minister what document he is reading from?

An Ceann Comhairle

That is not a point of order. The Deputy will conduct himself or leave the House.

Mr. Harte

I merely want to know what the Minister is quoting from.

Mr. Boland

I am quoting from a letter received from the Donegal County Council dated 13th June and received by me on 14th June, and because the Deputy ran out of the Chamber——

Mr. Harte

The Minister knows well——

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy will conduct himself or leave the House.

Mr. Boland

He was not here then to hear me read out that letter last Thursday from the departmental file and showing that this was the only document on that file. Still he comes back here almost a week later to repeat what he knows to be the same false allegations.

Mr. Harte

The Minister abused the privilege of the House by coming back afterwards——

Mr. Boland

As I stated, the first intimation I had that anything of this nature was afoot in Donegal County Council, apart from the phone call I mentioned, was the letter dated 13th June giving an outline of the new scheme of differential rents adopted by the Donegal County Council, and as I explained, any such change is subject to my approval. The proposals are now under examination.

Mr. Harte

But they are still in operation in Donegal.

Mr. Boland

I do not know what was the cause of the delay in submitting these proposals which were passed by the Donegal County Council two months ago, but it is hard to avoid asking the question: "Did it suit someone to have this question still undecided on June 28th?" Deputies know well my attitude to the question of differential rents. I have made it clear in regard to the proposals submitted by Dublin Corporation that only those who can undoubtedly afford to do so should be asked to pay the higher rents, that schemes should be so designed as to favour people with families and that after all the appropriate allowances have been deducted from the income, the rent payable should be based on a reasonable proportion of the income as reduced in this way.

Mr. Harte

That is not so.

Mr. Boland

Time does not permit me to go into greater detail, but Deputy Harte has sufficient knowledge of my attitude to know I would regard the proportion of one-fifth of income which his County Council adopted as excessive. He also knows I would not regard the allowances proposed in this scheme as adequate.

Mr. Harte

Why did the Minister not turn it down?

Mr. Boland

He knows now and has known since the scheme was adopted by his Council two months ago that I will not approve of it and that when I send it back it will be much more favourable to tenants of limited means while at the same time preserving the principle of facilitating the housing of people of small means by providing that reasonable rents will be paid by those able to pay them.

Mr. Harte

That is pure eye wash.

Mr. Boland

It is hard to avoid the feeling that perhaps we need go no further in our quest as to the reason for the submission of this scheme being delayed to a date which precluded a decision being made before the local elections. At any rate it is obvious that it suits Deputy Harte's purpose to be able to threaten unfortunate people with the dire consequences of this scheme with which he has collaborated.

Mr. Harte

I have not agreed to it.

Mr. Boland

It suits him to misrepresent the position as being of the Minister's making when he knows in his heart and soul it is not so, that the Minister has not come into it yet and that when he does it will be changed, as I have said, very much in favour of people with families and with low incomes. Like every scaremonger, rumour suits him rather than fact, particularly in a case like this where he knows the rumours in which he and his Party are specialising will never come to pass.

Mr. Harte

This is not rumour. This is fact.

Mr. Boland

In regard to rents schemes generally and particularly in regard to the circular to which Deputy Harte has referred so often but refrained from quoting, I want to quote from the Department Circular.

Mr. Harte

I did not get a copy of it to quote.

Mr. Boland

I quote:

The Minister is concerned that the substantial contributions from public funds should be distributed equitably, so that those most in need benefit most from them. In particular, he would stress that no one in need of rehousing should have to be refused a house or should suffer hardship on account of inability to pay rent. On the other hand, those who can afford to pay for their accommodation should be required to do so.

These were the principles on which renting schemes were to be based, according to the Department's circular to which Deputy Harte has referred but which he refrained from quoting. Are these unjust sentiments? Can any Deputy here propose a better policy for the housing of our people?

Mr. Harte

Actions speak louder than words.

Mr. Boland

The fact of the matter is that the submission of this scheme by the Donegal County Council was delayed to a date which prevented it being dealt with before the local elections.

Mr. Harte

The responsibility rests at the Minister's door.

Mr. Boland

It suits Deputy Harte and people like him to have this whole question a rumour rather than a fact because he knows it will be a much more favourable scheme that will go back from my Department to the Donegal County Council.

Mr. Harte

The people are still paying increased rents.

The Dáil adjourned at 11 p.m. until 10.30 a.m. on Thursday, 22nd June, 1967.